The Dream Crafter(83)

“If they choose to be.” Several feet away, and now Laire stopped and turned to him. “You need to convince your sister to limit herself. It’s on you to bring her back, because if you don’t, the gods themselves will step in to destroy her. They can’t let her live otherwise.”

Nakoa stepped forward, and if there was fear, it still meant nothing. This was his beloved sister. He may have been the one in prison, but they both had spent the last decade joined together, living in hell and refusing to give up on the other. He wouldn’t give up on her now. They were together to the end, and he’d remain in hell with her forever if that was the path she chose. “Amana.”

Amana kept stroking Merc’s hair. “I can’t save him, Nakoa. It’s taking everything to keep him from dying.”

He kneeled beside her, hesitant in a way that had him hating himself, but again, it didn’t matter. He was hers always, and whatever she chose, he would accept. He sat, not touching, but close enough she could touch him if she wished. “Amana, you have to drop the dream.”

Violence he’d only seen hints of radiated from her, her head shaking in near epileptic fashion. “If I drop the dream, he dies. I won’t let him die.”

“You love him?” And only now did everything make sense, and Nakoa closed his eyes against the guilt of his part in this situation. He had hurt this man, taken him in front of her, pulled her away and tossed her around, giving her no choice like no one ever gave her. “Do you hate me for what I did?”

“No.” Her voice was fierce and breathless and he near sobbed in relief.

Thank gods, her eyes had cleared with her response and he pressed on, needing to keep her with him. “You can’t keep this up, Amana. It isn’t real.”

“Why is my magic less real than others? Why should I toss aside what I want? That’s all I do. Bow and beg. Now I have power, and the rules change?”

A storm was forming, her skin near glowing with the power that was drawing close and focusing within her. There wasn’t magic in him, but Nakoa would swear he felt an answering force from without, as if others were gathering their own magics against Amana.

The gods themselves…

And it didn’t matter. “I’m with you, always. If this is your choice, I stand with you. My only question is what would he want, this man you love?”

“I don’t care what he wants. I want him to live.”

“Will you take away his choices like I took away yours?”

She stilled, her mouth falling open, and one of those warm, loving hands that always stroked his hair and calmed him throughout his life came up to cover her mouth as horror filled her gaze.

“You have every right to feel that.” Nakoa grabbed a handful of sand underneath him, holding his hand high and letting it fall through his fingers. “I thought it was the right thing. That’s my only excuse. All I could see at the time was if one of us had to be caged, I didn’t want it to be you. I was too young to realize I was damning you to something so much worse.”

“You didn’t–”

“I did,” he interrupted. “I’ll never ask you the details, but I know I did. In my selfishness, I forced that on you.”

Here, now, her hand covered his, fingers shaking and hand as warm as he remembered. “It was my choice. Everything I did was my choice.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said again, squeezing her hand, delighting in their first true touch, without the berserker between them or screams of misunderstandings. “I don’t know him. I have no loyalty or love for him. I’ll follow your lead wherever you go. But I will ask you again, one more time, for you, because I don’t want you to live with what I live with, knowing what I did to you. Is this what he would want, and will you do it anyway? Because if he loves you, he doesn’t want this.”

She leaned into him, her head on his shoulder as her hand remained on Merc’s chest and his head on his lap, seemingly unwilling to lose the touch of either of them. “I’m selfish enough to not want to care.”

“Yet you do, because there isn’t a true selfish part within you. That’s who you are, who you’ve always been. My big sister always had too much love in her heart, and I will beat his ass again if he takes you away from me and doesn’t deserve that gift.”

She laughed, even as Merc’s blood covered her hand. “He deserves everything and more. He deserves the world.”

“That’s still not enough to convince me he deserves you.” He shifted and kissed her forehead, his heart beating in delight at the contact, the connection. “We make fearful decisions and end up damaging those we love most, who own part of us. You and I have done nothing else. Don’t you think it’s time to stop?”